My Fugitive Jungle

I have been playing around with doodles for a while.  Here is the biggest and latest doodle.  The piece is a fat half of cotton and is destined as a prize on "And then they set it on fire."

First I started off with white cloth that I doodled with a black gel pen--nothing special--not meant for fabric. Whenever I would stop, I would iron it to try and heat set the ink.

Then I colored it in with water-soluble pencils.  I used them both dry and dipped into water.  Not too much water cause that would make the gel pen ink blur.  Kept ironing it too.

When I was done coloring it, I brushed it with print paste to bond the ink and pencil to the fabric. That made the colors and ink a bit more fuzzy.  When that had dried I gave it a coat of very diluted blue Setacolor to blend the colors and background.  When it was dry and with much trepidation I threw it into the washing machine.  VOILA!  The inks/colors stayed!!  You can not believe how excited I was over that!  Last step was to put a little smooch in spots to give a little shine.

First piece I have finished to this extent.  I need much more practice but I am pleased by the experiment.  Yep, tonight I expect a second piece will get started.